Research Ideas?

[Phiona]

I'm currently a third-year psychology student but will be entering honours next year, and I have to pick a topic to do for my thesis.

Regardless of anything I will pick a topic to do with videogames, so just wondering if you guys can think of anything interesting to examine? :P Things like addiction in trophy whores or what kind of people play videogames etc.? :)

Thanks!

[the_only_moggy]

why not examine the physiological response to different kinds of gaming. You could have subjects play a particular game for a set amount of time and monitor their vitals and hormones or wateva. Do it with some violent, some puzzle, and some other shit, then you can see about video games and violence and if there is any chance of a link.

[Yamaharu243]

I'm currently a third-year psychology student but will be entering honours next year, and I have to pick a topic to do for my thesis.

Regardless of anything I will pick a topic to do with videogames, so just wondering if you guys can think of anything interesting to examine? :P Things like addiction in trophy whores or what kind of people play videogames etc.? :)

Thanks!

The effect of horror games such as silent hill on people's mentality in real life

[Haza103]

The effect of horror games such as silent hill on people's mentality in real life

How do you measure that though? By getting a bunch of Daily Mail readers in a room to discuss how evil games are.

I myself wouldn't choose a game because it's too difficult. Some peope geto too pushy and say "they're plain evil", only those who play it will say "the others are talking bullshit". You'll end up having to take a side which could effect your results.

[Yamaharu243]

How do you measure that though? By getting a bunch of Daily Mail readers in a room to discuss how evil games are.

I myself wouldn't choose a game because it's too difficult. Some peope geto too pushy and say "they're plain evil", only those who play it will say "the others are talking bullshit". You'll end up having to take a side which could effect your results.

How did you come to the conclusion that thats the way people learn?
no, you set up surveys on the net, invite people who havnt played it or play video games realy and have them play it for a little, have a wide demographic.

and yeah, stop with the negativity

[sean1313]

why not examine the physiological response to different kinds of gaming. You could have subjects play a particular game for a set amount of time and monitor their vitals and hormones or wateva. Do it with some violent, some puzzle, and some other shit, then you can see about video games and violence and if there is any chance of a link.

Yh, thats a good idea and it could produce interesting results.

[Haza103]

How did you come to the conclusion that thats the way people learn?
no, you set up surveys on the net, invite people who havnt played it or play video games realy and have them play it for a little, have a wide demographic.

and yeah, stop with the negativity

Hold on, your talking to me about negativity XD

What part of "how do you measure" don't you get? You can't how mental/ agressive people gbet through playing games. You can measure hormones and all that stuff but there has been no clear link between anything like that.

[the_only_moggy]

The effect of horror games such as silent hill on people's mentality in real life

They do you know, I did some part time work in maintenance whilst playing Silent Hill Origins, every time I saw a broom or a wrench I'd want to pick it up and put it in my pocket in case I needed it later.

I think though that surveys and opinion polls don't produce accurate psychological results, more sociological, which we all know isn't a science, where as Psychology is. Ok so maybe I'm being harsh on Sociology, but You tend to get more scientific results, plus it's alot more fun, when you get to take blood samples and stick a bunch of electrodes on people :P.

Seriously though, an opinion poll seems like a lame thing to do for a thesis. I actually always thought the best experiments were the ones where the psychologist lies to the subjects to test something, like Milgram or those guys who would fake muggings or hear attacks on the street to see what people would do.

[Phiona]

I'm fairly certain that physiological studies have been done on video games many times before and they don't really show anything that exciting. Blood pressure goes up, heart rate goes up etc., but doesn't really tell you anything that interesting. Maybe scanning the brain would be interesting but it's out of my price range at the moment. :P

The problem with testing the effect of horror games on people's mentality is that it would be a self-report measure and it might not be that accurate. It also depends on how long ago since you played the game and a number of other variables such as personality etc.

I'm thinking more along the lines of getting people who've never played games to do tasks, and train some other people to play say 10 hours of video games and to see the effects on certain tasks. So far experiments have been done like this which show that video gamers show increased visual and spatial attention abilities compared to people who don't play these games.

I couldn't care less about violence and video games though. Don't care about the link, don't care if it exists, and meh.

[amplifiedAnt]

My girlfriend has just finished her degree in psychology and suggests examining personality types in people who play games, to see whether there's any link between different personality types and people who avidly collect trophies (or are simply addicted to games). I think the beauty of that would be that it's fairly easy to measure and to relate against existing research on personality, but most likely hasn't been explicitly explored.

[Neowaldrich]

what about you write about the assassinates did in name of some game? Try to defend the thesis that was not game who make the guy kill some one, he already have some mental problem and the game just help, was the way, not the cause of it...

The blame of someone kills somebody, is his parents, that not noticed that he have some physicology problem and let him play some kind of games...

For exemplo... i can't play GTA, GoW, Doom, Quake, Counter Strike for the rest of my life and don't freak out with this... but some guy if have tendency to be a killer, he'll freak out with this games...